After completing a degree in nuclear engineering at NC State and studying thermodynamics at Northwestern, Alan Cohen pursued a career in photography instead. Concentrating on places where the fragmentary physical remnants of historical and natural events are still visible—like vestiges of the Berlin Wall, remains of Holocaust sites, boundary lines, meteor impact craters, ruins of fortresses, abandoned colonial buildings—Cohen has documented “the earth of our past as a record of memory, not as an act of witness.” Earth with Meaning presents a major retrospective of Cohen’s starkly moving work, filling both of the Gregg’s main galleries with carefully composed images revealing the scars of history.

This project was supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources. Also made possible through the generous contributions of Susan Annable, Bruce Brittain, Robert Burger, Sharon Cohen, Grace Drease, Annie and Lewis Kostiner, Bruce Mackh, Sandro Miller, Ann Rothschild, David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, Jonathan Walsh, Susan Walsh and Vanessa Wilcox.

Textiles of Exile

Fiber arts made by immigrants, refugees, and displaced persons,co-curated by Molly Johnson Martinez and the Gregg Museum staff

All around the world, individuals have responded to displacement by making textiles that reflect their difficult new lives in unfamiliar environments. Working with fibers is one of the oldest of human activities, one of the easiest to seize and carry in an emergency (needle and thread are far lighter and more compact than pottery wheels, carpenter tools or blacksmith forges), one of the easiest to hide, one of the most comforting to engage in, and the craft most closely associated with storytelling. Due to various combinations of factors like these, links between the loss of home and place and the fiber arts are found almost everywhere. In Textiles of Exile, the Gregg displays examples from Hispanic immigrants in California, African slaves brought to the Americas, Afghan refugees in Pakistan, imprisoned women in Chile, and relocated Cambodian Hmongs in North Carolina; all call attention to the universality of the “silent scream” of homesickness.

In Response - Weaving by Ann Roth and Vita Plūme

May 31-September 6, 2012

Closing reception: Thursday, September 6, 6-8pm

Two contemporary weavers respond to objects from the Gregg Museum's permanent collection with works of their own. Vita Plume uses portraits taken in the Appalachians in the early 1900s by photographers like Doris Ulmann, Bayard Wooten, Paul Buchanan and others as a source of inspiration for making ghostly images and patterns hand woven on a digital Jacquard loom that explore the instability of visual and cultural identity. Ann Roth finds inspiration in quilts from the Gregg collection whose rhythmic repetition of geometric shapes, juxtapositions of fabric patterns, and often quirky color combinations influence her ikat, hand woven textiles.

According to the Biblical story of Genesis, the moment that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and became self-aware, the very first thing they did was make themselves something to wear. Using amazing objects from the Gregg Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition explores not only how clothing serves to protect, shelter, shield, and modify the human body, but also how what we wear helps us lure, seduce, dominate, segregate or manipulate others, discover spirituality and personal self awareness, proclaim our individuality or group membership, or express ourselves. Photographs, artifacts, jewelry, and a dazzling array of outfits ranging from military uniforms, gangster wear and tribal shaman’s garb, to executive power suits and ultra-high-fashion evening gowns, offer a fascinating foray into how clothes can do so much more than merely “make the man.”

Permanent Collection

The Gregg Museum of Art & Design has
a number of display cases located in the South Gallery of the Talley
Student Center that enable the permanent display of selected objects
from the collection. Often, these displays serve as mini-exhibitions,
available for viewing whenever the building is open.